Quesa Lounge is located in the the Sector 50 Market, Noida. It is a fairly new addition to the market and has quickly become a favorite haunt of college-going students and office-goers. You can find Quesa Lounge on Facebook and even on Foursquare.

So far, my favorite drink : the Virgin Mojito!

The Chef at Quesa is an absolute gentleman with a round up of some lovely food. They have quite an extensive menu to choose from.

Do not forget to try out their lip-smacking Chicken Wings! I don’t know what they put in them but they are absolutely delicious and I can’t help re-ordering them whenever I get a chance to drop by.

The Quesa Lounge also has a quirky collection of Hookahs and you can ask the go-to man, Tyagi, to fix you up with a very customized request.

And the following is a panorama of the entire lounge shot during the day.

Move your mouse left to right on the image below to view / scroll the panorama horizontally.

Overall, the Quesa Lounge is a cosy little place to hang out with your friends. Very friendly staff and an excellent Chef – you can also usually find the boys who run the place : Mayank and Adhar. I especially like the food – Noida doesn’t have many good yet reasonably priced places to offer and Quesa fits in perfectly in that empty hole.

This is a set of photographs from the special menu created by Kanishk who is preparing to be a Master Chef. Location courtesy : Quesa Lounge, Noida.

Shot on the Nikon D90. Photoshop levels and curves and exposure for post-production of images. We didn’t have a food stylist. There was Lamb guard of honour with whiskey honey glaze served with red wine reduction, Prawns in rum and filo pastry strips, Chicken Breasts with Pepper Vodka and mirin glaze served with balsamic reduction and Cognac & Mocha Cheese Oreo Souffle. The Balasmic Reduction and Red Wine Reduction were to die for. Yummy!

Four of my photographs are being used on the Network18 venture website http://www.in.com without my permission. The images are not hosted on the in.com servers, they are being leeched from my hosting servers. Network18 has very blatantly also provided a link back to where they have copied the images from and insouciantly mentioned “Images maybe subject to copyright.” Yes, it is stupid. Now, the CEO Haresh Chawla might not be aware of this – and he might be aware of this – in case of the latter… it’s a ridiculous business strategy. Below are the screenshots in all their glory – for posterity’s sake – and following are direct links till they get taken down : Image 01 | Image 02 | Image 03 | Image 04 – UPDATE : the images have magically disappeared! you can still see them here using Google’s cache Image 01 | Image 02 | Image 03 | Image 04. Thanks to @poeticgooner for the Google Cache hat tip.

They also sent me an email from the in.com website saying ” Thank you for your feedback. Can you please send us the link. Do let is know if the problem persists”.

Read : India’s copyright proposals are un-American (and that’s bad)

This incident was also covered on Chori.in.

Apparently, in.com uses a Bing.com API, which allows them to use keywords and then display search results on their website. While Bing.com and Google.com have my permission to include my images in their search results, in.com does not. Instead of first using and then removing after being caught, in.com should first take permission. in.com is a “content aggregator”, which means everything on that website does not belong to them [ that's my interpretation anyway - please correct me if I'm wrong ].

I’m not sure what Network18′s in.com missed – even though my website / blog clearly states “All rights reserved and copyright studioaside.com – they have gone ahead nonetheless. Shame on you Network18 and whoever made this bad decision for you. I’m sure they steal other content too – the written kind. You got a story, you share it in the comments.

The Samsung Bloggers’ Meet was held at the Hard Rock Cafe, Saket, New Delhi. The event was managed by @mediaredefined , Digitas and Communique and the agenda was to introduce two Samsung phones to the audience : the Samsung Galaxy S and the Samsung Wave.

This is before the start of the event – the venue was made available by Hard Rock Cafe, just 15 minutes before the event was supposed to begin. The ‘standees’ were being made ready and the projector was being setup. The entire projector setup seemed quite hi-tech especially because the phone screens were constantly being plugged into video / screen on projector mode.
I might have gotten a little carried away with the standees – they were made well – because they photographed real well. Some of the early arrivals. People connecting to the internet once the wi-fi details were passed on.	The demo phones in the hands of @praval from @mediaredefined The demo phones being fired up for the start of the event. @realin @pacificleo and @vivekk poring over the demo instruments. Sarfaraz from Samsung, starting with an introduction to bada – the mobile phone OS that Samsung has created.
The two Samsung techies who came down from Bangalore to answer more detailed questions regarding the OS and the platforms in question. from the adjacent table of bloggers.	Two flyers for the Samsung Galaxy S and Samsung Wave phones. @gautamghosh doing a thorough check of the Samsung Wave mobile phone.
Sarfaraz from Samsung demonstrating how one of the contact apps works on the Galaxy S.
The question and answer session was melded within the presentation – which is probably a good thing. Technical questions being answered by the Samsung team. Food, water, brochures, standees and bloggers.	The snacks were good – I tried only the non-veg ones. Sarfaraz from Samsung demonstrating a feature where you can sync up details from three social networking platforms : Facebook, MySpace and Twitter : for any of your contacts and see those details without having to separately log into your own Facebook / MySpace / Twitter accounts.
Excitement levels were high for the Nascar game that was played amongst three contestants. Ankur, from Samsung is at extreme right.
The winners getting hold of their Samsung Wave and Samsung Galaxy S phones from Samsung’s Ankur. @praval is in the background.
The Samsung Galaxy S : the more expensive of the two phones. Very light weight.
The Samsung Wave.
Sarfaraz giving the lowdown about swype, a new way of inputing text into your phone – this was something I was hearing of for the first time. The Samsung Galaxy S. The bag with contents that each blogger received : at right and below.

This Samsung Bloggers’ Meet was my first corporate-sponsored bloggers’ meet and frankly, I wasn’t expecting anything as good as this even was. The Samsung people were friendly, fielded all questions with honest answers and there was a lot of banter. Of course, everyone aspires for a more attentive audience and that isn’t always what you get. The Hard Rock Cafe people were polite and courteous and the @mediaredefined people did a good job handling the event – including managing once of the contests despite there being no phone network inside the premises and despite all the suggestions being thrown their way.

I for one, did not realize how four hours flew past – apart from the fact that I was busy with the camera, I did learn a thing or two about the mobile phone market and what companies like Samsung are planning. My only comparison point – as far as personal experience with mobile phones goes – is the Nexus One. And I’m still not sure how the two Samsung phones measure up. In any case, the Android platform is poised to take over the world – quite literally and I’m glad there are more platforms like Samsung’s bada that will keep Google on it’s toes.

The light streak from a couple of cars and motorcycles was more chance than plan. The plan was to try the camera remote with long exposure so as to get starry lights. After minor but many post-processing steps in Photoshop this was derived. The original image is below.

There is an upcoming photo shoot for a client who needs to take photographs of the interiors of their service apartments. I am going to be using only ambient light for the shoot and will try some photorealistic HDR instead of the usual blown out edges and halos. Similar to the effect on the above edited image. Long exposures on a tripod, with a remote – maybe I can get some starry lights in the service apartments.

I’m not sure where I’m getting the spots from at the top of the image. It could be a dirty UV Haze Filter, a ditry lens or dirt on the mirror in the camera. I hope it is the first. The full resolution image can be seen on Flickr.

Industrial photo shoot from half a decade ago. Shot on my Fuji SLR, 35mm film. A visit to the Mundra Special Economic Zone to cover all aspects of the Zone – from railways, to the Adani Jetty, the ports, the hypermarkets, an annual conference, etc.

This shoot was one heck of an experience – mainly because it was my first time on a port in the midst of all those huge cranes and containers. Photography is prohibited on ports and even though we had the requisite permissions, there were times we got chased down to show the physical proof in the from of the signed papers we were carrying.

Photographs from half a decade ago. Shot on my Fuji SLR, 35mm film. A visit to the Siyaram Silk Mills in Maharashtra to photograph the factories and shop floors. Comparing the quality of my photographs from then and now, I was quite a terrible photographer I might add.

The shoot itself was managed quite well by the Siyarams staff. This was one of the two initial paid photography shoots that I had completed. During this particular shoot, I realized that being a woman industrial photographer was slightly easier from one aspect – the workers tend to look into the camera with none of the camera-shyness that would otherwise be present.

Two of my close friends, Bharat Midha and Priyanka Sachdeva finally tied the knot on 20th of June 2010. I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to be their unofficial wedding photographer. Here are some of the selected images.

Complete gallery of the wedding photographs on the domain booked especially for them. the total number of photographs presented to them was 120. To hire us for capturing your wedding, give us a call on 99100 22104 or send us an email on naina@studioaside.com

Client’s portrait shoot. Also uploaded in ultra-high resolution on my Flickr photostream. All photographs have been processed in Photoshop. They were shot in Nikon’s native RAW format .NEF

Elaborate shooting setups are not my style and I prefer to shoot in natural surroundings with natural light as much as possible. Anand knew that before we undertook the project and on an early Thursday morning – as early as we could make it, we found ourselves at the perfect location : the Select City Walk mall in New Delhi – the chairs outside in the ‘lawn’ and other outside whereabouts.

I prefer to do most of my work after I’ve shot – in Photoshop. The trouble with that is there’s always so much that can be done – so many different approaches that can be taken. For that, I must thank Anand, because he mostly knew what he wanted and left the other bits to me – whatever direction I wanted to take.

Anand got the above picture printed on canvas – although I’ve not seen the print myself, I’ll have to take his word for it when he says it came out real good! Again, lots of Photoshop and bokeh – the table in the above shot was quite grimy but bokeh took care of most of that.

The Select City Walk personnel were quite co-operative – Anand and I pretended to be friends shooting pictures. The back story I’d prepared was that Anand was new to town and needed to send hot photographs back home to impress his friends! Of course we didn’t need to use that story.

The last shot above is a pseudo-HDR. Pseudo because I manipulated exposure in Photoshop for the same shot and then complied them together in Photomatix Pro and then brought it back into Photoshop for bokeh and other enhancements. It’s not perfect – I would have liked to introduce a sharp, contrasting, grainy look but Anand was not looking for that approach, hence I let that be. Maybe I will work on one of those looks on my spare time.

Uploaded this photograph on Flickr. This was during client work at an industrial photography engagement at a rice factory / mill located on the outskirts of Delhi. It’s quite unlike me that I enjoy industrial photography but I’ve come to realize that the main draw for me is to be able to make a picture out of all the hard edges and dirt and metal. I like being able to do that. Sometimes there are glimpses of something beautiful that I see, that has further potential, after being processed, to turn into something quite unexpected. The photograph you see below is the final product.

This is a loosely documented process of how I got to it. Would be impossible for me to give exact values of tweaks that were made in Photoshop and Photomatix Pro. It is an HDR image & I usually tweak till I like what I see. Sometimes I go back multiple times to fix the image some more – in this case, I stuck with the first product of the processing.

Three exposures while shooting +1 0 and -1 : I don’t remember if I used a tripod for this one.

PhotomatixPro put the three exposures together to create an HDR, which I then tonemapped to something I liked – there’s a lot of microcontrast going on in this image. My Photoshop file still has the layers so I have the HDR product from PhotomatixPro below. You can see it doesn’t look much different from the originals. It does look a tad more ‘dreamy’.

Then I Photoshopped. Unsharp Mask and Noise Removal. If I ever decided to get this printed, I would prefer to see a more ‘smooth’ image, and a little more sharpening doesn’t hurt anyway. Using the Transform perspective and skew tools, I aligned the image to an angle that I liked a little more than the one I had shot.

Duplicate the layer and overlay at a 100% – I like doing this to HDR images – it increases the contrast and removes the pasty look – unless you want the pasty look. I prefer more ‘pop’. Skewed the angles some more.

For this particular photograph, I thought it might look better with a double overlay so I duplicated and did another 100% overlay and I liked it better. Not only does the contrast pop, it also accentuates details – makes it more grungy – so there’s an overall noise-removal smoothness but a grungy look.

I use NIK Software’s Color Efex filters and applied a cross processing using Y06. Once.

And twice.

Using the Darken/Lighten Center filter, I made a slight change to the lighting – to subconsciously allow the viewers’ eyes to focus on the main pipe – not too much otherwise it kills the effect.

I also use NIK’s Silver Efex, which primarily helps tweak black and white images. One feature that I absolutely love is the ability to increase the ‘structure’ of an image – small details jump out. So I applied the filter – there are too many choices but I used one to increase contrast a little and maxed the structure. And overlay at 50% on the color image from before.

Followed by a final ‘Burn Corner’ tweak using the Automate filter of Pixelgenius’ Photokit.

Imagine. I haven’t even bothered to play with curves, levels, alpha channels etc. that live within Photoshop. There really is no limit to what all can be done. This is how I do it and instead of following this to the ‘T’, it’s better to figure out what you like seeing & then do that. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still nowhere near finding my ‘style’ of photography. It probably depends on something as flippant as my mood! And if you’re wondering if you’re going to get photography assignments based on how well you can process – at least in India – the answer, in short, is no.

Some of the photographs that I shot – as shown below, got published in the Rock Street Journal‘s April – May 2009 Magazine Issue. No credit provided in the issue but apparently they’re going to mention it in the next issue.

A big thanks to Archit who traced the RSJ Magazine issues and bought all three he could lay his hands on.

The band members are Vinay Venkatesh, Sunneith Revankar, Venkat Raman, Vinit Bharucha, Rahul Hariharan and Aditya Gopinathan Nair.

Bhayanak Maut is a Mumbai based hardcore / deathcore band.
You can find them on Twitter too. This concert was held at NSIT, Dwarka, New Delhi, India.

The complete album can be viewed on Facebook [ with about 60 photographs ].

UPDATE : Iteration two of the rice shoot.

The client was not happy with the photographs I sent them. So another round – this time closer to the initially picked out stock image without any snazzy effects in Photoshop.

This is how I got started today. I thought I’d try a white porcelain bowl for the rice instead of the wooden plate or bowl. Substituted paper while the rice cooked. Didn’t like the white on white so ditched the white bowl in the second shot. Added peas, carrots, some cloves of garlic, turmeric powder – and this time around I added vermilion powder or ‘sindoor‘ to the red chillies powder to make it redder instead of the dull dark orange that is actually is. Some cinnamon sticks too. You can see the setup atop a table in the background. AS PREVIOUSLY BLOGGED : before the update above. The stock image approved by the client, with some major changes and additions and removals, is shown below. I had scoured a lot of images for cooked rice but was unable to find anything close to what the client had in mind. Finally the client has approved the shoot and this is the first day of planning. STUFF THAT NEEDS TO BE IN THE SHOT - Red chilly powder - Dried red chillies - Cinnamon sticks - Black pepper corns - White pepper corns - Crushed black pepper - Crushed white pepper - Clove of Garlic - Coriander leaves - Spring Onions - Cloves - Cooked rice [ this will include chopped carrots & boiled peas & for trial some almonds or cashew nuts ] - Round plate or square plate for the rice – maybe a shallow, wide bowl - Wooden holder for crushed black and white pepper - Wooden holder for red-chilly powder - Bamboo mat / ‘chatai’ for the background - Trial : Onion cut in half, placed with the garlic There will be iterations and I plan to use three to four different backgrounds and layouts so I’m thinking it will not get done in one day and I might have to go in for another round of cooking rice. Some of the things to be kept in mind while photographing food that I’ve read : - Back-lighting creates more character than front lighting - Depending on what you’re shooting, smaller lights can create more interest - Food is typically half-cooked to retain color and ‘perkiness’ Another thing I’m thinking for the rice specifically - A little more than half-cooked rice, immediately smothered with a lot of colorless oil when still piping hot, so that the cooked grains don’t stick to each other As the shoot progresses, I will update with shots and new notes within this blog post. Some of the stuff I photographed today. Stuff I used for lighting : two torches, one canvas as a reflector and shot in natural light on the roofed-terrace. There’s natural light coming in from three sides. Camera was on a tripod and most shots have been taken on the self-timer with long exposures.

No white bowl and in fact, no bowl at all. Found a good serving tray to use for the background. Decided to keep a wide focus this time around. So Rijuta – who had left a comment earlier mentioning that non-blurred elements in the background would create more dimension – probably the client agrees with your view! Smaller quantity of rice, which I then hand picked – I took out all the smaller, fatter, broken pieces and left in the longer grains. That’s what my ‘studio’ looks like. It’s my bedroom + office + music room and now + photo studio as well. The balcony allows light to come in from a focused point – since I wanted some back-lighting – the white curtain can be used as a nice diffuser for harsh natural light. No wonder I got chillies into my eye – what with all the spices strewn all over my bed! I was on top of the bed with the tripod and shooting top-view. You can see the tripod legs on the bed. Below, is what I sent the client today. Awaiting feedback. EQUIPMENT TO SHOOT WITH - Nikon D90 - 18-55mm lens - 55-200mm lens - Back light - Front light - Might try something with the Diwali lights that I have – a string of tiny yellow bulbs - Tripod NEXT STEPS - Sketch layouts - Shop for non-perishables - Create setup based on sketches - Shoot test shot without perishables to ascertain lighting placement - Cook rice & shop for perishables - Shoot with perishables The rice was half-cooked and sprinkled with Olive Oil. The peas and carrots were chopped, put in a bowl with some water and microwaved for 45 seconds and added separately to the already cooked rice. There’s Turmeric powder and Red Chillies powder in the shot – red chillies powder IS NOT bright red in color – it looks almost like a dirty chrome-yellow – had to enhance color while post-processing. The flash was on a lot of times but it was covered with a cloth to soften the light. I personally prefer the second photograph after the post-processing.